Human Development
• Human development is a process of enlarging the range of people’s choices, increasing their opportunities for education, health care, income and empowerment and covering the full range of human choices from a sound physical environment to economic, social and political freedom.
• Western or euro-centric view of development: Every government community or individual measures its performance (level of development) in relation to the availability and access to computerisation, industrialisation, transport and communication network, education and health care, safety and security etc. But this is partial or one sided view. Colonisation, marginalization, social discrimination, regional disparity are the other aspects as well.
• For India, development is a mixed bag of opportunities as well as neglect and deprivations.
• A few areas like the metropolitan centres and other developed enclaves that have all the modern facilities available to a small section of its population. Vast majority of people are compelled to live under abject poverty and sub-human conditions.
• The majority of the scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, landless agricultural labourers, poor farmers and slums dwellers, etc. are the most marginalised lot. A large segment of female population is the worst sufferers among all.
• The poor are being subjected to three inter-related processes of declining capabilities:
→ Social capabilities – due to displacement and weakening social ties (social capital),
→ Environmental capabilities – due to pollution
→ Personal capabilities – due to increasing incidence of diseases and accidents.
• The present development has not been able to address the issues of social injustice, regional imbalances and environmental degradation.
• The first H.D. report by United Nations Development Programme was published in 1990. The 1993 report says that “development must be woven around people and not the people around development”.
Human Development in India
• India with a population of over 1.20 billion is ranked 130 among 189 countries of the world in terms of the Human Development Index (HDI).
• Low scores is a matter of concern as lack of sensitivity to the historical factors like colonization, imperialism, socio cultural factors like human rights violation, social discrimination on the basis of race, gender, caste, religion, social problems like crimes, terrorism, war, forms of govt., are some factors which are crucial in determining the nature of H.D. especially for India.
• Planning commission of India prepares the HD report using states and the UTs as the unit of analysis. State govt. prepare HD report based on districts as unit of analysis.
• Apart from the basic indicators to calculate HD, the Planning Commission also take into account aspects of economic attainments, social empowerment, social distributive justice, welfare measures undertaken, etc.
Indicators of Economic Attainments
• Rich resource base and access to these resources by all, particularly the poor, down trodden and the marginalised is the key to productivity, well-being and human development.
• Gross National Product (GNP) and its per capita availability are taken as measures to assess the resource base/endowment of any country.
• The percentage of persons below the poverty line in 2011-12 has been estimated as 25.7% in rural areas, 13.7% in urban areas and 21.9% for the country as a whole.
• The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of a country does not fully reflect the quality of life of a country. There are other factors like housing, access to public transport, air, quality and access to drinking water which also determine the standard of living.
• The States like Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur and Odisha, Dadra and Nagar Haveli which have recorded more than 30 percent of their population living below the poverty line.
• Poverty is a state of deprivation. Jobless growth and rampant unemployment are some of the important reasons for higher incidences of poverty in India.
Indicator of a Healthy Life
• Living a long and healthy life, free from illness and diseases with a long life span are the indicators of healthy living.
• Availability of pre and post natal care facilities in order to reduce infant mortality and post delivery deaths, old age health care, adequate nutrition and safety of individuals are some important measures of a healthy and reasonably long life.
• India has done reasonably well in some of the health indicators like decline in death rate from 25.1 per thousand in 1951 to 6.5 per thousand in 2015 and infant mortality from 148 per thousand to 37 during the same period.
• It also succeeded in increasing life expectancy at birth from 37.1 years to 66.9 years for males and 36.2 to 70 years for females from 1951 to 2015.
• The findings of 2011 Census of India are very disturbing particularly in case of child sex ratio in the age group of 0-6 years.
Indicators of Social Empowerment
• ‘Development is Freedom – specially freedom from poverty, hunger, illiteracy, servitude and any other forms of domination.
• Freedom is only possible with the empowerment and participation of the people in the exercise of their choices and capabilities in society.
• Access to knowledge about society and environment is fundamental. Literacy opens up the gates to such access.
• Overall literacy in India is approximately 74.04 per cent (2011). while female literacy is 65.46 per cent.
• Total literacy as well as female literacy is higher than the national average in most of the states from south India.
• There are wide regional disparities in literacy rate across the states of India. There is a state like Bihar which has very low (63.82 per cent) literacy and there are states like Kerala and Mizoram which have literacy rates of 93.91 and 91.58 per cent respectively.
Human Development Index in India
• The Planning Commission calculate the human development index by taking states and union territories as the unit of analysis.
• India has been placed among the countries showing medium human development.
• The composite index value of 0.790 is placed at the top rank followed by Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Goa and Punjab. As expected, states like Bihar, Odisha and Chhattisgarh are at the bottom among the 23 major states in India.
• There are many reasons behind such differences among the states-
→ Socio political: Kerala has the highest value largely due to its high literacy rate compared to the states of Bihar, M.P., Odisha, Assam etc.
→ Economic: Economically developed states like Maharashtra, T.N., Punjab, Haryana have higher HDI value, compared to the economically weaker states.
→ Historical: The social disparities and regional distortions which developed during the colonial period continue to play a significant role in the Indian society.
• The Government of India has made concerted efforts to institutionalise the balanced development with its main focus on social distributive justice through planned development.
Population, Environment and Development
• Development is a complex concept. On the one hand it has brought improvement in the quality of life but at the same time led to an increase in social inequalities, discrimination, and ultimately leading to environmental degradation.
• The UNDP in its Human Development Report (1993) tried to amend some issues and emphasized on
→ Progressive democratization
→ People’s participation and security
→ Empowerment of people
→ Constructive role of ‘Civil Societies’.
→ Reduction in military expenditure
→ Transition from defense production to production of basic goods and services.
→ Reduction and Disarmament of nuclear warheads by the developed countries.
• Scholar like Sir Robert Malthus was the first one to voice his concern about the growing scarcity of resources as compared to the human population.
• Resources are being utilised more with increasing demand-but they are unevenly distributed.
• Rich countries have more access while the poor ones are suffering.
• The pursuit for control of resources by the powerful to exhibit ones prowess is the main cause of conflict as well as the apparent contradictions contradictions between population, resource and development.
• In the ancient scriptures were essentially concerned about the balance and harmony among the elements of nature.
• Mahatma Gandhi advocated the reinforcement of harmony and balance between the two.He was concerned about development leading to the loss of morality, spirituality, self reliance and non-violence and environment.
• He emphasised that austerity for individual, trusteeship of social wealth and non violenceare the key to attend higher goals.
• His views were followed in Brundtland Commissions Report (1987) and finally in the ‘Agenda 21 Report of Rio Conference’ (1993).
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History – Themes
in Indian History |
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Pol
Science – Contemporary World Politics |
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– Politics
in India since Independence |
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Geography – Indian
People and Economy |
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– Fundamental of Human Geography |
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Chapter 1: - Population: Distribution, Density, Growth
and Composition |
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Chapter 12: - Geographical Perspective on Selected
Issues and Problems |
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